


the crowns on their heads that caress the dark clouds

by dogparty



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Circus, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Deformities, Dysfunctional Family, Freak Show, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Self-Harm, Sexual Content, Tragic Romance, dark themes, small bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:45:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogparty/pseuds/dogparty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is stupid and you’re stupid.” She says, voice shaky and scared and angry and thrilled. </p><p>“I know,” Stiles says, taking a breath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the crowns on their heads that caress the dark clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this before I go to school; this is my attempt to write a huge idea into a small fic, does it work? I have no idea.
> 
> Also keep in mind that there is literally no coherent time line in this fic, mostly because I didn't really bother to tie things together smoothly. So this is admittedly, a bit of a mess. I'm trying new things with my writing style. Please forgive any mistakes!
> 
> The title is taken from the song Dark Woods Circus.

Lydia has two fingers on her little right hand.

Well, not entirely as she will often disagree. “I have the perfect amount of fingers”; she sniffs as she examines her blood red nails, eyes distant and neutral. Closed off as she lies to herself with a somber face of cold steel and ice, soft emotions locked away and hidden cautiously from the world.

Lydia has five finger bones on her little right hand; her middle, index, and ring finger are all wrapped up in a traumatized sheath of deformed, puckered meat and skin. Veins and muscle spun around the bones and locking them together in a prison of thin, delicate flesh. There are two finger nails, buckled and irregular, settling over where the tips of her middle and ring fingers would be. Where the tip of her index finger would be, there is only a small breadth of pale, abraded skin. Like a scar.

She likes to keep her finger nails in faultless condition, perhaps to make up for the abnormality on her right hand. Buffing them and shining them and rubbing them with sweet smelling creams, soaking them in water and painting them with bright colors that reflect the hazy piss colored lights of the glitzy booths and small overhead faerie lights. Her eyes go intent as she burnishes off scuffs and rounds jagged and split edges into neat swoops, blowing on them and smiling almost sadly when she deems them _just_ perfect enough to paint with deep, sensual reds and purples.

She’ll never touch anyone with her right hand. Often holding the appendage close against her chest, like something precious and secret, nestled into the sparkling frills of her plunging sweetheart neckline. Sometimes, Lydia wears black bejeweled gloves that curl sensitively over her knuckles with thick, detailed lace, almost giving off the illusion that she has five perfect little fingers on her perfect little right hand.

Lydia’s been a part of the show since she was a baby. Sold for a high price by an impoverished family, she was a beautiful doll of porcelain with a rosebud mouth and round, pink cheeks. She was a beautiful child with the hand of the monster, something wrong and twisted; “she’s not fully human” is what the visitors are told by the ringmaster, “the poor girl’s rat of a mother sinned by fornicating out of wedlock and the Devil himself greeted the bastard infant to the world with a gentlemanly kiss to the knuckles, his Satanic touch marking the extremity and its owner as damned forever.” She’s a perfect sin wrapped in smooth curves and fiery coils of hair.

People would flock to see the beautiful, rouge lipped girl born with a terrible blessing set by the Prince of the Void. Stiles once asked if the story made her sad, and Lydia simply smiled at him and ran the willowy fingers of her left hand through his hair, perfect nails scratching at his scalp and she said” no,” that it made her proud.

Unlike Lydia, Stiles hadn’t been sold into the circus. He’d been swept off from the dirty street in a rush of bright colors and painted faces, oddly shaped people and ferocious animals. No one would miss him. The people of his former town had seen the child as nothing more than a filthy parasite, a homeless orphan that tugged at coattails and skirts with small, useless sticky fingers. Playing in the mucky gutters and snarling and snapping at the other destitute children like some sort of animal, curling over stolen food and trinkets like a predator over its kill. Sometimes running on all fours and romping and scrapping with stray dogs, sleeping with the waif canines and other savage children in dank alleyways, howling and yipping at the moon when it was fat and heavy in the sky.

One day while the circus was passing through Stiles’ small town, a burly carnie had gathered him out from a tipped over trash bin and threw him into an old barred cage, he howled and kicked, screeched as people milling the streets walked on with their privileged noses high, clawed at the rusted metal surfacing until his small nails cracked and bled, dripping onto the cold iron and smearing over his fingers and palms. The vicious paroxysm didn’t halt until another grimy child was eventually thrown into the cage, a bundle of oil stained skin and unruly dark hair. The boys snarled at each other, much like dogs would, each claiming their own respective corners of their oubliette and staring one another down with narrowed eyes.

When the night came and the heaving life of the circus squeezed into the cars of a train, the cage containing the two children had been shoved into a dark corner of one of the small boxcars, on top of a cage of tigers and under a cage of enormous, predatory birds. Among the stink of abused animals, the jarring motion of the moving locomotive, and the undulating rumbling on the tracks; the shivering, terrified boys gave up their reticence and curled around each other into a tangle of skinny, grubby limbs and rag-loose clothing. A dog without a pack never fairs well, they knew that much.

The boy with oil splashed skin and wavy dark hair was called Scott. He was roughly the same age as Stiles and every bit as unfortunate. Stiles liked him. They were very much the same.

Both of their parents died in industrial accidents, though where Stiles made himself at home in the maze-like alleys of the town, Scott skulked around the factory where his mother died. “I saw it happen”, Scott said almost reverently, “her shirt got caught in a machine and it sucked her right in! She was screaming something awful and then she was gone and then I thought the machine was hurt or something because a lot of blood started dripping right out of it!”

Scott thought that maybe somehow, someday, the machine would spit her back out again and she would come to find him and things would be okay, even though he really knew that they wouldn’t be. Not ever again.

Stiles’ dad was killed by a falling beam. He didn’t see it as he wasn’t there, but a few days afterward he managed to sneak a look at the place where it happened. It looked like someone had exploded; there was an ugly, dark splat of dried blood that had to have been at least six feet wide all the way around. If Stiles looked hard enough, he could see the shape of a flower within the bespatter of bodily fluid.

Stiles didn’t have a mom, and Scott didn’t have a dad. Neither of them talked about it really, you don’t need to talk about things that you don’t have.

Their first show had been together, as they growled and clawed at anyone who tried to separate them regardless of the stinging slaps and harsh kicks they got for their opposition. The ringmaster howled a tale of boys raised by wolves, wild and inhuman. Snarling, fuming beasts crammed into the soft skin of human children. The crowd of sweaty, loud people gasped and hummed as the boys were shoved out into the ring, undernourished wisps of grimy clothes and dirt caked skin and wild, flashing eyes. All around them was light and noise, sweltering heat and unfamiliar eyes, the smell of perspiration and oily food clogging their senses. Obstacles of hoops and platforms were scattered across the sandy expanse, the tall, thin ringmaster dressed in shimmering red and gold, like some sort of beacon, standing expectantly with a coiled black whip in his hands.

It wasn’t the whip that motivated Scott and Stiles to race around the ring on their hands and feet, or leap through hoops or beg like pathetic mutts, and it wasn’t the coarse encouragement from the raucous crowd either. It was for the scraps of dried meat the ringmaster threw at them for each task they completed, the beds to sleep on and the safety of shelter. They didn’t care about the rowdy people in the crowd, nor the venomous bite of the leather coil. They cared about survival.

They tell themselves this now, even as they’ve aged into skinny, out of condition adolescents. They laugh and spit and make a show of it, how they’re just been using the ringmaster for their own means. That they’re really the ones in control and are simply doing what any smart animal would do. As they jeer and natter like idiots about how smart they are, a boy named Derek will always curl his lip and scoff. Blackness and thunder curdling deep in his chest.

Derek is one of the oldest kids in the circus. No one knows how old he really is; what his exact age could possibly be, they just know that he’s certainly not as young as some of the other children. Derek doesn’t talk, not really. He expresses his emotions and desires and thoughts through sub-vocal growls and grunts, gestures and movements and facial cues. The only person he ever speaks to at all is Stiles, his words hot and wet as he presses them into the soft skin of Stiles’ throat. The dark curls of hair under his bellybutton. The supple, delicate flesh of his inner thighs.

Derek is here because he’s scary, because he’s big and strong and can lift and toss things much heavier than himself. People shy away from him, but can’t help but watch in awe as he wordlessly displays his strength in feats that amaze. Derek is here because like many of the other circus brats, he’s an orphan. There are rumors of what happened to Derek’s family, whispers that filter and carry and irritate. A dainty tightrope walker says that the older boy killed his own family members in an act of sadistic, crazy violence. A man who is only two feet tall speaks behind small hands and stubby fingers, tells a story of a burning home and a child bathed in ash and blood.

The ringmaster looks at Derek with a gleam in his eye, like he’s proud. Like he’s watching an invention of his own thrive and prosper. Derek looks at the ringmaster like he wants to tear him apart, and he would probably do it too if he could. It’d be all too possible for Derek to kill the tall, thin man but for some unknown reason, he won’t. He clenches his fists and holds himself still, ticking his jaw and watching with poison eyes as the ringmaster twirls his whip and smirks and holds his head high and disgustingly smug.

When Stiles slips close to him, curling his fingers around Derek’s bicep and rubbing his nose into Derek’s shoulder, Derek will relax and curl around Stiles. Breath thick and heavy like he just ran a very long distance without a single break. Thin and breathless.

Stiles wants to ask what’s happened, why Derek is the way that he is and what the ringmaster could have possibly done, but he remains quiet, eyes falling half-mast as he lets the older boy take what he needs. Lets Derek pull him into an empty boxcar and press him onto his back and into the cold wood floor, an arm hooked under his shoulders and a hand branding hot around the sharp jut of his hip. Stiles always gasps when Derek pushes into him, gentle and almost painful, his body tightening instinctually. Derek always shuffles and grunts into Stiles’ throat, playing his teeth against the corded muscle between his neck and shoulder, pressing harder and tighter when Stiles whines and swipes his palms and fingertips over Derek’s back and shoulders.

After it happens for the first time, Stiles asks Lydia what it meant, because when he asked about it to Derek the other boy flushed and grumbled and smooshed his lips against Stiles’ temple without a coherent word.

“It means you belong to each other.” Lydia says as she swipes the polish brush over her smooth finger nails. She’s dressed in a small, clinging red dress covered in shiny black frills and lace, fish net tights swathing her milky thighs, bustier pushing her breasts high. Her hair is curled into thick tumbles, cheeks tinged pinged pink, lips a dark wine red, lashes colored jet black and so long they brush up against her neat eyebrows. “It means that you care about each other so much that you’d sin for each other.”

The next time it happens, Stiles thinks about Lydia’s words as he curls close to Derek. They’re both sweaty and hot and smelly, tired after performing and fucking and trying not to cry when they’re beaten and smacked for stepping out of line, as the ringmaster put it. Stiles had an ugly dark bruise over his ribs from when he was kicked for accidentally getting his leg caught in a hoop during practice, Derek had covered the bruise with his mouth and sucked and licked at it until his was red and hot, throbbing and stinging in all the right ways. Stiles thinks as he slides his fingers over the small print shaped bruises he’d pressed into Derek’s shoulder. Yeah, he thinks. I know what it means.

When Stiles tries to tell Scott his discovery about sinning and love, Scott shushes him politely and drags Stiles to see their new family members.

Three girls sit in the small tent where the performers rest and eat and entertain. They’re all around the same age, all around Scott and Stiles’ age. They’re not scared.

The first girl is named Allison. She’s tall and pale with red lips and a square jaw, her brown eyes are defiant and hard but she allows the performers to examine and prod at her. Though when a not-quite-right sword swallower named Isaac grabs a handful of her thick, dark hair and presses the locks to his face with an inhale, she produces a long sharp dagger and jabs at him with it, slicing a delicate line along his cheek and he cowers back into the arms of Erica the contortionist. “I can drive you full of arrows too.” She bites and Erica raises an eyebrow and smirks, shoving Isaac away as laughter ripples through the group of circus folk. Scott’s eyes never leave Allison, his face and bright and warm under a layer of sweat and grime, he’s smiling and he looks rightly smitten.

The second girl is exotic. Smooth, pale skin and midnight black hair, her eyes are different, soft looking and secretive, as if she knows something you don’t know and never will know. Her lips are soft and pursed and her hands clench against her thighs, she looks nervous but altogether un-phased. An odd sounding name carries through the crowd, her name is Kira. “What’s special about her?” Scott whispers into Stiles’ ear, breath tickling against his neck, Stiles flinches a bit.

They learn what’s special about her later, during her first show. Kira’s dressed in small black clothing that’s ripped and netted, her lips are painted dark purple and her hair is done up in tight poodle curls. She extracts a long, sharp, narrow sword from a smooth black sheath and draws the blade across her bared stomach. Not deep enough to reach her soft organs, but deep enough to split the skin apart and cause tacky blood to slide down over the smooth stretch of her belly and drip onto the sandy floor of the illuminated ring. Women in the audience shriek and men cry out, Kira smiles, secret eyes crinkling as she skates the sword over her skin once more and creates another deep red slit. She can’t feel pain. She’s always been that way. Soon, she’ll be covered in scars and disfigurements. All for the sake of the show.

The third and last girl is Malia. She’s a wild orphan, like Scott and Stiles. Though wilder than both of them combined. Her skin is naked and tanned, she won’t wear clothing. Her sandy hair is long and tangled and her nails are yellow and ugly; Lydia would have a heyday grooming them. The girl’s dark eyes are completely feral and they dart around the room keenly, she snaps at anyone who gets too close with a rough throated snarl and her fingers are wrapped very tightly around Kira’s arm. Her flicking eyes meet Stiles’ and stay there, irises a brown so dark they look almost black. Malia stares at him and for a moment Stiles can’t breathe and his heart is beating so loudly that everything else fades into a dizzying tunnel that doesn’t dissipate until the savage girl finally looks away, pressing herself closer to Kira. It’s without a question that she’ll become a part of Scott and Stiles’ Wolf Children act.

The girls and the circus folk blend into each other, become familiar with one another. Stiles spots Derek, his eyes oddly intent on the three new performers, he then catches Derek’s eyes and pauses, the older boy’s eyes are sad and droopy, a little wet and a little red rimmed. He doesn’t even approach the newcomers and slips out of the tent without a word, lips pressed tight together and body taut with tension. Stiles follows and catches up to him, leads Derek away from the commotion and light and noise, leads him to the dark familiarity of their boxcar and helps Derek lose himself.

Stiles tries to get Derek to talk, but Derek simply shakes his head and mumbles a cracked “no” against Stiles’ collarbones. Stiles sighs and weaves his fingers through Derek’s hair, tired and sad.

One day, Scott bites. The ringmaster is yelling at Allison, leather gloved hand squeezing painfully tight around her wrist; her fingers spasm as he crushes harder, bones grinding painfully. The corner of Allison’s left eye twitches a bit but she stares hard and heavy into the ringmaster’s smarmy eyes. He barks that he wants her to strike Kira with an arrow; Allison says she’d rather eat tiger shit.

There’s a hard crack as rough leather meets soft skin, Allison’s head jerks to the side and her knees shake, body turning and dropping to the ground, dark hair twirling at the force. The air turns to glass and no one breathes, moves, speaks. Then there’s a grinding snarl and Scott is racing across the ring on all fours, he’d become less wild over the years, acting feral for mostly show now. Though there are times when his untamed side comes through in a gale of curled lips and hunched shoulders and dangerous narrowed eyes.

Scott launches himself forward, sliding on his stomach and wrapping an arm around the ringmaster’s leg, then sinking blunt teeth deep into the flesh of the thin man’s thigh. Hell breaks loose, the ringmaster yelps and Allison’s screeches as the man raises a fist and blows his knuckles against Scott’s temple. Scott only snarls louder and bites harder, bites so hard that blood spurts out around his teeth, soaks into the black and gold fabric of the ringmaster’s trousers and slides down Scott’s throat in a metallic rush. Two carnies dash into the ring, twins named Ethan and Aiden. One wraps his arms around Scott’s waist while the other grabs onto Scott’s jaw and pries his mouth open, teeth slipping out of ragged skin and ripped cloth.

Aiden throws Scott onto the loose ground and delivers a fast kick to his stomach, then to the underside of his chin with a sickening crack. He’s about to continue his beating when the ringmaster grabs his nape and hauls him back, eyes wild and angry. He hisses filthy words at Scott, grabs his hair and spits in his face, slaps him and shoves him to floor, grinding the heel of his boot into Scott’s sternum. Scott chokes and spits out foamy blood and writhes in utter pain but he doesn’t fight back, no one interferes.

That’s just how it is, how it’s always been and how it will always be. Blood thickens behind Stiles’ eyes and he looks away and tries not to cry when Scott is dragged away through the grainy sand from his ankles by the twins and trailed by ringmaster, dragged toward the cages where his back will be flayed and then he’ll be locked up for who knows how long with no food or water. Where he’ll be forced to starve and dehydrate and wallow in his own piss and shit while his body tries pathetically to heal in such a sordid environment. Scott will howl and cry in a language only Stiles will understand, and Stiles would fret and cry to himself as he curls up alone in the small bunk that he and Scott shared.

Allison doesn’t move from her spot, knees drawn with a hand pressed over her heart, as if it were beating hard and painful against her ribs and the only way to stop it was by force. Eyes down and closed off, hair mussed and flung over one shoulder in a tangled curtain. Her cheek is a bright burning red and the moment she lets out a hitched sob is the moment that Lydia swoops in and wraps an arm over her shoulders, ushering her to her feet and out of the ring, out of sight. A gentle touch to Stiles’ fingers snaps him into of focus, out of his head and the threatening tears, the fingers are thick and calloused and he doesn’t have to look over to know that it’s Derek. Without a word, Stiles curls his fingers tightly into Derek’s palm.

By the time night falls and the moon is just a small silver sickle, Stiles lays on his lonely and cold bunk, heart wrenching as he listens for Scott. It’s what they do, whenever one of them is thrown into the cages they howl to each other. Stiles had already hollered his throat raw, garnering no response. He tries not to cry and tries not to think of Scott being dead. The boy closes his eyes and tries to sleep, hovering in that small, warm space between unconsciousness and wakefulness.

He snaps back to full awareness when the thin mattress dips and a weight settles at his back, molding around him and curling a warm arm over his belly. Stiles relaxes into the embrace and is almost asleep when he realizes that it’s not Derek, whoever this is, is much smaller than Derek, and only a little smaller than Stiles himself. He turns his head a bit and meets liquid dark eyes that make his heart lurch a bit.

Malia stares at him with impassiveness; she’s wearing an old nightgown that Lydia forced her to put on. Her hair has long been trimmed and cleaned and her nails are short and neat, she still has an aversion to clothes, which the circus folk are okay with. They know a thing or two about being comfortable in your own skin, though someone usually makes Malia wear something at night so she doesn’t get cold or sick. She’s yet to speak to anyone, reminiscent of Derek, though Stiles assumes it’s more of the fact that Malia may not even know how to speak English, or any language at all, where Derek simply chooses not to speak.

Stiles is almost uncomfortable with Malia being this close to him, but this is different than sleeping next to Derek. This isn’t heat and passion and love and emotion, this is comfort and warmth and sympathy. A queen curling around her kittens, or a she-wolf grooming her pups. Stiles’ heart lurches again, and he wishes that Derek was easy to communicate with. That Derek wouldn’t disappear most nights and would actually speak to Stiles instead of gritting out small words. Stiles sighs sadly and settles into Malia’s hold.

When Stiles sleeps, he dreams of pain and blood and stinging whips. Lydia crying and Allison being beaten, Malia screeching and foaming at the mouth, Kira with a gaping hole in her chest; looking confused because she can’t feel it, Scott is hanging by his neck and his face is purple and slack, Derek is nowhere to be seen and Stiles is afraid. Through it all, through flames and bruises and pain and bleeding gashes and unwanted touches and acidic leather crops and gritty hard sand and plastic hoops, yelping audiences of morphed faces and gross heat, melted face paint and ripped costumes and howls of pain and misery stands the ringmaster. Tall, taller than he’s ever been, a dark tree-like figure standing above all with his maniacal face and small glinted eyes and slimy smile. He blocks out the sun and his shadow stretches beyond sight and he looks down at Stiles like he something to slice open and dissect and torture and laugh at and treat like a _fucking dog_. And in the midst of all of this, Stiles can only think of one and single thing. We need to get out of here.

The thought has never occurred to him. Never, the circus was all he knew and it was his only home. It was safety and family and friends and food and warmth, that was worth the pain and the suffering, right? _No,_ Derek’s voice ground out. Angry and harsh and irritated, like the question was unbelievably stupid and Stiles was unbelievably stupid for even asking. _We need to get out of here._

When Stiles opens his eyes, Malia is gone and he’s hot and suffocating and his vision and blurry. The fear and pain of his dream chasing after him into consciousness. Lydia is sitting on the bunk opposite of him, looking sad and tired. There’s a dark ring of purple bruises around her neck, her deformed hand held close to her chest. Dark smudges curl under her eyes and she chews her lip. Before Stiles can open his mouth, she says “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

Stiles says “I know.”

It’s stupid, all of it. Stiles can’t find Derek and Allison is a guilty wreck and Scott is locked up. No one else would do it; no one else would try it or think of it. Not even Stiles. Derek and Allison and Scott are the brave ones, they’d gladly kill the ringmaster and rip out his throat, swing his wet vocal cords around and maybe wear them as a bloody crown of victory. Stiles is scared, he couldn’t do it. Kira wouldn’t do it. Lydia wouldn’t do it. And Malia… she wouldn’t even be able to understand.

He considers the other performers, they’ve shown their hatred to the ringmaster before, but he didn’t think that a single one of them would ever consider harming the tall, thin man. That made him angry. They shouldn’t be so afraid of one man dressed in red and gold, brandishing a thick black whip like a lifeline. Stiles thinks of the possibilities, and decides on what to do. But first, he needs to find everyone. He needs his terrible, damaged, broken little family to be together. There’s no way he’d make it in the world outside of the circus without any of them.

“We need to let the animals go.” He says to Lydia as she applies her makeup, her face stony and flat. She looks at him likes he’s lost it. She tells him that it’s a stupid idea, that she had just been tired and wasn’t thinking straight when she told him that she couldn’t continue. Her eyes glimmered oddly as she spoke, and her eyes slid to the side as the words tumbled out. She was lying.

It all happens slowly and quickly at the same time. Stiles is pretending to practice when Derek slips behind him, looking distraught. Stiles touches Derek’s wrist and speaks to him deliberately, quietly. Relaying information. Derek’s eyes widen here and there, but he nods, kisses Stiles slow and deep, and then pulls away. Slipping out from the big top and disappearing from sight.

Stiles moves quietly, makes sure to find Kira and Malia and Allison, to make sure they’re okay, that they’ll be okay. Kira and Allison look at him like he crazy, stupid. And he probably is. But they nod, grab his hands and hold them tightly, eyes wet and hard. Malia watches the interaction intensely, wrinkling her noses and snatching at one of Stiles’ hands the moment it’s released, digging her fingers into his palm so hard that it hurts. It’s a heavy, full hearted attempt at such a simple gesture and it makes Stiles heart swell a little, he squeezes Malia’s hand back, watches as her eyes take on a satisfied, proud light.

The next thing that happens, is a loud shriek, then a snarl. The snarl of an animal. “Run, hide in the forest!” Stiles yells at the girls, ignoring a twinge of guilt as he has to shove Malia’s shoulder roughly. Malia growls at him but shuffles back, thankfully understanding the situation. They know not to linger, and vanish into the darkness. Stiles presses himself to a wooden beam and watches in terror and sick fascination as a large lion slashes its way through the tents, its hulking tawny body moving quickly as it roars and takes down anyone unfortunate enough the get caught in its sights. There’s another roar, quitter and more of a rumble. The tigers are out as well. Soon, chaos falls.

People are running, screaming, tripping to get out of the way of angry, abused and rampaging animals. Elephants plow people into the ground, goring them on their massive tusks and crushing them with their massive bodies, splattering their organs across the dry grass and sand. Colorful birds soar into the sky and predatory cats slice people open and break necks between their large jaws, swinging bodies around like pathetic rag dolls.

Stiles winces and closes his eyes as he slips toward the cages, to where he’d told Derek to break the bars of Scott’s prison, where he told Lydia to go after she seduced the animal keepers out of their keys. He clenches his fists and feels sweat pool in his palms, he doesn’t pray because he knows there isn’t a God to listen to him. But Stiles just hopes. In the grand scheme of things, hope is relatively useless. It means nothing; it’s not physical and is barely mental. Having no literal effect on anything whatsoever. Stiles is a firm believer in the pointlessness of hope, but he also just wants to be okay. He darts into the dark, shadowed place where the cages are held. A sour, cloying scent hanging heavily in the air as he slipped toward where he absolutely knew Scott was being held. Somewhere in the mess of death and turmoil that raged back at the main settlement of the circus, Stiles could hear the ringmaster yelling and screaming.

Stiles wants him to be screaming out of pure, unadulterated pain.

As he made it to where the last cage was, Stiles breathes a shaky sigh of relief when he spots Lydia’s red hair. Derek is crouched and supporting a slumped over Scott, his lips pressed into a thin little line and his face hard and steely. Lydia looks terrified, she’s clutching a bag close to her chest and her bottom lip is trembling a bit, but her eyes are fiery and bright and determined. Scott lifts his head a little as Stiles nears, bruised face brightening. Stiles bites his lip and holds back a choked sound, hugging Scott tightly before pulling back and wiping at his own face.

“Allison?” Scott asks, voice thin and cracked. He needs water.

“She’s okay, you’re okay.” Stiles says, voice coming out quick and jumpy and frantic. He shoves his shoulder under Scott’s armpit and hefts him up, Derek silently moving to Scott’s other side and swooping an arm over his over his shoulders. Lydia stands and moves close to Stiles, her arm winding tightly around his waist. “This is stupid and you’re stupid.” She says, voice shaky and scared and angry and _thrilled_. “I know,” Stiles says, taking a breath. “But it’s okay,” he looks over at Derek. Derek’s face is somber but his eyes are all liquid undiscernible and Stiles wants to kiss him and curl up close to him and own him and be owned by him and sin for him and live out the rest of his Hell forsaken life with him with Lydia and Scott and Allison and Kira and Malia and anybody else who they manage to pick up along the way, who somehow survived from the catastrophe that Stiles should feel guilty about but isn’t. He needs this to happen, they need this to happen. They need to get out of here. Derek takes a deep breath and reaches over to lace their fingers together, gripping tightly and painfully and gently and perfectly and lovingly. 

They’re going to get out of here.

**Author's Note:**

> Before you ask, there aren't going to be any more parts to this. I barely had time to crank this out with school being terrible so yeah, I might try in the future but for now this is stand alone. 
> 
> there are probably more interesting things on my [tumblr](http://kakashipng.tumblr.com)  
> 


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